논문

The purpose of this paper is to find ways for improving local public finance for the cultural area. Theoretically the cultural service is defined as a worthy goods which produces a positive externality to the society. Therefore, the production and supply of the cultural services are supposed to be positively recommended and financially supported by the public sector. Nevertheless, the budget level of the cultural area within the budget of the local government as well as of the central government is in a very poor situation. Currently, the relative budget size of the cultural area to the total budget of central government and of local government is 0.5% and 2.2%, respectively. At the same time, there exist a substantial difference among different local governments in terms of cultural budget size. According to an analysis of the Gini coefficient across 66 cities with 1955 data of the size of cultural budget in terms of per capita the coefficient turned out to be 0.5826. This paper also found that there might be a possible existence of scale economy in the cultural expenditure.
This paper suggested several ways of improving general levels of the local cultural budget. Among them, culture-related sur-tax system(sur-taxes on the Alcoholic Tax, Tobacco Consumption Tax, and property taxes), shared-funds with the existing Development Charge and Charge for an Excessive Holding of Housing Site are particularly recommended. And intergovernmental fiscal relations or, subsidy systems are suggested to be changed to the direction of considering the increasing importance of the cultural function in the local public sector. Especially, culture-related projects such as building museum, library, and gallery are suggested to be added as a new project area within the Local Transfer System(JiBang YangYeoKum).